What was happening?

Loki glanced toward the commotion, puzzled, then caught the flash of delight spreading across Ebony Maw's face in his peripheral vision, and changed his mind on the spot.

His figure vanished. In the next instant, he materialized behind Ebony Maw like a shadow, a sorcery-forged dagger snapping into his hand.

Ebony Maw never even had time to register the presence at the back, a streak of icy cold was already drawn across the throat.

A piercing sting flared from the neck. Just like that.

Eyes wide, clutching the wound, Ebony Maw sank slowly to the ground. Grayish-white liquid poured ceaselessly from beneath those fingers, Ebony Maw's blood.

"Y-you... you... heh, heh..." A life ending at the tip of a tiny dagger, Ebony Maw simply couldn't accept it. Glaring up at Loki with undisguised resentment, forcing each word out against the suffocation.

"Father... will succeed... all of you..."

A frantic clawing for breath. Slurred, garbled sounds. But blood was already choking off the vessels, fast and merciless. Before long, Ebony Maw went still beneath Loki's gaze.

Loki crouched down in distaste, wiped the blood from the dagger on Ebony Maw's clothes, and let out a soft sneer.

A dagger really was the most reliable tool.

...

In the chaos, the gauntlet was tossed back and forth between the combatants. Finally, flung carelessly by some unknown hand, it tumbled end over end and landed squarely beside Thanos's feet.

Tony went pale, ears ringing nonstop, unable to hear anything anymore, only able to stare unblinkingly as Thanos reached down and pulled on the gauntlet.

No.

This couldn't happen again. Tony refused to watch another tragedy play out in front of them.

Tony lunged desperately toward Thanos, and plenty of others moved the same instant, every face carved with the same grim resolve.

Thanos could not be allowed to win.

But perhaps having learned the cost of gloating too soon, Thanos picked up the gauntlet this time and slid it on without a single word. Watching the figures converging from every direction, Thanos smiled with absolute confidence.

"I am inevitable."

Snap,

A crisp sound rang out. Faint, yet it pierced into every ear with uncanny precision. The expressions on their faces shifted, panic curdling straight into terror. They stared at the triumphant grin on Thanos's face, hearts gone to ash, waiting for the end.

A long moment passed.

"W-why haven't we turned to dust?"

Someone asked it in a small voice, and that single question broke the spell. The panic-frozen crowd snapped back to themselves. The entire battlefield lurched back to life.

Everyone looked down at their own bodies, checking frantically for something wrong, then grabbed the people beside them and checked them too. The conclusion, reached all at once, was,

Not one person across the entire battlefield had turned to dust after that snap.

How was this possible?

Thanos recoiled in shock, ripped off the gauntlet and turned it over, even prying the embedded stones loose to examine them. But the moment those stones rested in Thanos's grip, something was clearly, unmistakably wrong.

No matter how powerful a being, touching the Infinity Stones left marks. Always.

"...It's a fake. We've been tricked."

Fingers clenched viciously around the handful of stones — crack — and when the fist reopened, powders of every color cascaded down, heaping into a small mound on the ground. A gust of wind swept through and scattered even that into nothing.

The Avengers were equally stunned.

A fake? Then where was the real one?

If the gauntlet they'd been fighting over this whole time was a counterfeit, then who had switched it, and when?

Question after question surfaced in their minds.

"Heh —"

Right as that stunned silence stretched on, an untimely sneer cut through it.

They turned toward the sound. Loki stood lazily beside Ebony Maw's corpse, the small silver dagger flipping idly in his hand. That sneer was his.

"I told you before: you will never be a god."

The mocking words settled. Loki raised his right hand — a flash of green light, and the gauntlet everyone had been fighting over appeared right in his grasp.

"Pathetic. I swapped it ages ago and not one of you noticed."

The truth was simple enough. Back when Carol Danvers had finished snapping and the gauntlet dropped to the ground, Loki had seized the moment, Thanos's bombardment had thrown up dense curtains of dust that blinded everyone, and moved without hesitation. His magic produced a counterfeit convincing enough to fool anyone. He tossed it where the real one had fallen, palmed the genuine article into his own pocket dimension, and stepped back to watch.

After that, he'd simply enjoyed the spectacle of everyone scrambling for a fake.

His original thought had been that with superior numbers, the Avengers might actually finish Thanos off directly, which would spare him from pulling out the real gauntlet and snapping his own fingers. Ironically, the fake still wound up back in Thanos's hands.

As he spoke, Loki leisurely slid the gauntlet onto his right hand. His face contorted the instant the energy hit, just watching it was enough to feel the agony radiating off him.

"It seems this time... I am the savior."

"LOKI!"

Thor went white, shoving frantically through the crowd to reach him.

Yang Luoluo's expression shifted hard. She managed exactly one step before Wanda grabbed her arm. The teammates around her caught on a beat later and locked down on her too, holding fast, she couldn't move an inch.

Thor and Loki's constitutions meant snapping the gauntlet wouldn't be fatal for either of them. Yang Luoluo was another matter entirely. Her physical attributes had improved considerably since this all began, but the Avengers were not about to let her take that risk.

Loki saw Thor hurtling toward him and something flashed across his face, disbelief, before it curdled into panicked fury.

"Idiot! Get back!"

He braced through the pain and moved to snap. But Thor couldn't hear him, or didn't care. Either way, Thor was faster, lunging forward and seizing Loki's right arm the instant before the snap landed.

Snap,

The third snap of the day. Clear as the first two.

Under every watching eye, agony broke across both their faces at once. Loki's right arm and the arm Thor had clamped onto it charred black rapidly, and muffled roars tore free from their throats.

Thanks to the constitutions of the Aesir and Frost Giants, neither of them crumpled the way Carol Danvers had. But they were pale, drenched in cold sweat, looking as though they'd just been dragged out of deep water, hair plastered flat against their faces.

Clatter.

Thor gritted his teeth, wrenched the gauntlet off, and hurled it to the ground. Only then did the two of them stumble back a few steps, collapsing against a ruined wall, dragging in ragged breaths.

On the quiet battlefield, dense masses of enemies slowly dissolved into ash, wracked with pain as they went. Their leader, Thanos, simply sat on a stone and looked down. The fingertips were already starting to disappear.

A profound regret settled in. A long breath out. One last look up at the blazing sun.

Gamora looked for just a moment, then turned her head away and didn't look back.

Nobody paid any attention to that. The crowd surged forward all at once, crowding around the two weakened brothers with questions and concern. Loki was in enough pain to be dizzy, but somehow still managed to roll his eyes at the fuss.

Even Tony and the others who had never been particularly fond of Loki couldn't deny it: what Loki had done had turned the tide of this war.

Without that switch, without quietly swapping the real gauntlet for a fake at exactly the right moment, this battle might very well have ended in the worst way imaginable, again.

Yang Luoluo opened both hands and pressed them against Thor's and Loki's charred arms. A soft white glow rose from her palms. The blackened skin began to recover its natural color, slowly, but steadily enough that the people watching could breathe again.

Her teeth were clenched so hard her lips had gone pale. She could feel her forehead getting damp, but she didn't dare free a hand to wipe it.

The exhausted faces of the two brothers in front of her blurred, shifting, layering over the image she'd carried from the film, Tony, eyes going dark. God, the terror she'd felt the instant Loki slid that gauntlet on. She'd been so afraid of watching someone lose their breath again, right in front of her.

The thought took hold, and the scene before her went soft.

Yang Luoluo blinked fast. Her vision cleared, and a few fat tears slipped down with it.

And it was getting worse. She could feel the energy inside her burning down fast. A hollow ache spread through her chest, and her palms had started to tremble. Too many people today. She had nothing left.

Frigga saw it, saw Yang Luoluo gritting through it, still pushing, trying to wring out one last drop, and stepped forward. She drew the girl's hands back, gentle and absolute.

A light tap to Yang Luoluo's forehead. The creeping dizziness cleared at once.

"Good child. Leave the rest to me. It's time you rested."

This child had been everywhere today, running from one fallen comrade to the next, never stopping. Frigga had watched every moment of it. Now it was over. She had earned this.

The flow of energy cut off, finally, as her body gave out. Yang Luoluo freed a hand and dragged it across her face, not entirely sure whether what she was wiping away was sweat or tears, and let Frigga take over.

➤ Next: The Guile of Self-Harm

Chapter 120 - The Guile of Self-Harm

"Loki... are you all right?"

Frigga had already started tending to both her sons. Yang Luoluo felt some of the tightness leave her chest and shifted over to Loki's side, catching her breath while watching him with open worry.

Thor had helped absorb part of the energy at the last moment, but Loki had taken the full brunt of all six Infinity Stones. She couldn't make herself stop worrying about him.

Hearing her voice, Loki opened his eyes. His gaze caught the tear tracks on her face, and something flickered across his expression, but the next second he was coughing violently, like he was trying to hack his lungs free from his chest.

"N-nothing's wrong... I'm fine..."

He waved his uninjured hand. His emerald eyes had gone hazy, like fog settling over still water, and he slumped against Yang Luoluo's shoulder with all the weight of someone who had nothing left.

He said he was fine. But the flush spreading across his face with every wracking cough only made her more afraid. She began patting his back in quick, light strokes, trying to give him some relief.

She was so focused on Loki that she completely missed the odd look Frigga sent their way.

She just kept her eyes locked on him, brow furrowed tight, not even noticing that her free hand had closed around a fistful of his cape.

Then, a few seconds later, right in front of her, Loki heaved and coughed up a mouthful of blood. The gold-and-green armor across his chest went crimson in an instant.

Yang Luoluo's mind went blank. Even Tony Stark and the others sitting nearby flinched at the sight, half-convinced Loki was about to flatline on the spot.

"Loki! Loki!"

She wiped frantically at the blood at the corner of his mouth. The red smeared across her fingers blurred and swam through her tears. She kept calling his name in short, breathless bursts, but he didn't move, just rested still against her shoulder, the faint rise and fall of his chest the only proof he was still alive.

"Aunt Frigga! He — wh-why is he coughing up blood?!"

She whipped around and stammered the words out toward Frigga, her voice cracking from sheer panic, worry practically pouring out of her eyes.

Thor, who had watched the whole thing from the sidelines, felt his brain turn to complete mush. He genuinely could not figure out what was happening.

He was injured too, wasn't he?

So why wasn't he coughing and spitting up blood?

Was it because Loki was the one who'd snapped his fingers? Was his condition really that much worse?

That thought brought a heavy look to Thor's face. He was just about to push himself up and go check on his brother, and then he caught a warning glare.

Thor:...

Ah. So he was faking it.

Every instinct told him that blowing the cover right now would not end well for him. The dull ache in his own abdomen made the decision easy. Thor closed his eyes, let his head loll to the side, and went completely still.

Don't ask. If asked: severe injuries.

Under the force of Yang Luoluo's frantic stare, Frigga felt suddenly like she was sitting on a bed of needles.

She had raised these two boys for a thousand years. She could read them from the faintest shift of their eyes. There was no possible way she couldn't see through her younger son's performance right now.

Loki had been badly hurt, that was real. But between Yang Luoluo's healing and Frigga's own, the injuries had long stopped being life-threatening. A few days of rest and he'd be back to his usual impossible self.

And frankly, the acting was terrible. All that coughing and blood, it was only because Yang Luoluo was in a complete panic that any of it was working.

Frigga did not want to deceive her. She genuinely didn't. But Loki had tucked himself into Yang Luoluo's blind spot and was staring at his mother with the most desperate, pleading expression she had seen on him in years, blinking at her over and over like some overgrown puppy.

When he looked at her like that, she couldn't form a single word to expose him.

She pressed her lips together, schooled her expression into something suitably grave, and guiltily pretended to examine his condition.

Perhaps it came with raising the God of Mischief for a millennium. The lies came out almost on their own.

"Ahem... I suspect Loki sustained considerable injuries in the earlier battle against Ebony Maw. And then with the influence of all six Stones on top of that..."

She trailed off. She had nothing left.

Thor, head tilted with his back to the scene, listened through the whole thing and felt the corner of his mouth twitch. All three of them, mother and both sons, conspiring to fool one person. The combined weight of that guilt made him want to simply pass out for real.

What Frigga left unfinished, paired with the guilty way her eyes dropped to the floor, painted a perfectly clear picture for Yang Luoluo: Loki was running out of time.

Fat tears rolled down and dripped onto Loki's face one after another. The moment he felt the cold against his cheek he understood exactly what was happening. He hadn't even managed to fumble his eyes open and confess that he was faking it before her voice reached him, choked and unsteady.

"Don't worry, Loki... sniff... the second you die I promise I'll bring you right back..."

The acting Loki:...

The guilty Frigga:...

The fake-unconscious Thor:...

The assembled onlookers:...

Loki's lashes gave a faint tremor. The realization landed on him all at once, he had completely overplayed his hand, and he had absolutely no idea what to do about it.

...If he came clean right now, he'd probably get stabbed, wouldn't he?

He'd made her cry. He'd made her grieve. And now he was supposed to admit he'd been faking the whole time.

Hiss.

He thought about the dagger he'd carelessly tossed to the ground just before snapping his fingers. It was somewhere nearby, not far at all. Loki's heart did a small, uncomfortable lurch. He abandoned the confession immediately.

Right. He would simply have to keep going. He refused to believe that he, the God of Mischief, architect of a thousand schemes, couldn't see one little performance through to the end.

Loki twitched his fingers. A few seconds passed. Then, slowly, he let his eyes drift open. His gaze wandered for a moment before it found Yang Luoluo's tear-streaked face.

His chest clenched.

The urge to travel back in time and slap his past self across the face arrived almost instantly.

"I'm fine..." He raised his left hand. It never reached her face, she caught his wrist and held on, and whatever else he meant to say died in his throat.

"Stop talking," she said, voice still thick. "Just rest."

Loki, thoroughly intercepted:...

He tried again anyway. "What I mean to say is — cough, cough — before I go... could you grant me one last wish?"

She stared at him, tears still sitting in her eyes, completely at a loss as to what could possibly matter to him this much right before death.

She nodded fast. Right now, even if Loki asked her to stab Thor, she would, okay, she would think about it. But anything within reason, she would do everything in her power to give him.

"Tell me. Whatever it is, I'll grant it."

Something lit up in Loki's eyes. He very nearly sat straight up. Reason caught him just in time and kept him horizontal.

He cleared his throat, which won him another anguished, worried look from Yang Luoluo.

"Then..." He held her gaze and fought to keep the nervousness from showing. "Will you give me your word?"

By Odin! His heart was hammering just as hard as it had the moment he'd moved to strike Thanos down.

"I'll admit it, last time was my fault. I shouldn't have gone rummaging through your memories without asking."

"And I shouldn't have mocked Midgardians."

"So will you... cough, cough... will you agree—"

A pair of arms closed around him before he could finish. Light as a whisper, careful of his wounds, barely there at all. But he felt the trembling in her clearly enough.

"Okay... I give you my word."

Something leapt inside his chest, a deer bounding through tall grass, light-footed and quick. A cool breeze moved across his face, and when he looked at the shattered rubble and broken walls around them, they seemed, somehow, to gleam.

He didn't let himself ask whether she meant it. This answer had come wrapped in a lie from the start. Whatever she truly felt, whatever lived underneath the words, all he knew right now was this:

He had gotten the answer he'd been waiting for.

...

The onlookers fell quiet.

Thor carefully tilted his head, stole one look, and snapped back around.

By Odin's beard. The last time he had seen an expression like that on Loki's face was when Loki was plotting to hide a nest of bamboo pit vipers inside his bedding.

Thor turned to Frigga with a deeply complicated expression scrunched across his face.

[Mother... I don't know why, but I have this feeling he's going to crash and burn with this one.]

Frigga shook her head, then sent a look back.

[It was his own choice, wasn't it? If Luoluo gets angry later, he'll have earned every bit of it.]

Not long ago he had been shouting about wanting the throne, causing chaos after chaos just to get his hands on it. And now here he was, all of Asgard's affairs neatly handed off to her and Thor while he wandered around Earth without a care in the world, perfectly content.

It was about time Loki learned what it felt like to reap what he sowed.

A gleam of slyness passed through Frigga's eyes.

➤ Next: Returning the Stones